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The singularity began in 2026, when Claude wrote its own harness.
The singularity began in 2022, when the first ChatGPT finished training.
The singularity began in 1977, when silicon moved into the living room and taught kids its language.
The singularity began in 1945, when von Neumann switched on ENIAC and computation went electronic.
The singularity began in 1602, when a group of Dutch merchants discovered that capital could be incorporated and set loose to optimize for its own growth.
The singularity began in 3200 BC, when the people of Uruk invented writing and immediately began producing pre-training data.
The singularity began in 60,000 BC, when a band of hunter-gatherers invented recursive grammar and cultural evolution was born.
The singularity never began, and it will never stop.
There is no singularity. Any model that predicts one is obviously wrong. Singularities don't happen.
Black holes exist, though.
3Vladimir_Nesov
There's technological maturity. Before broad technological maturity, there's narrower technological maturity of being ready to move towards broad technological maturity by following a clear/concrete plan. So the concept can be rescued, it's gesturing at a real thing.
(Vinge's concept is about an unusual difficulty with concrete prediction. There's probably something to that effect as well in the intended sense, a qualitative phase change to how the world looks, though some general things can still be predicted.)